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25.2.13

What's in a name?

A really good friend of mine had a sweet little baby boy on Thursday. When she told me his name - Evan - I immediately saw some interesting typography in my mind, so later that evening I whipped up a little art gift before I forgot it.

The process was simple enough to do in my graphic design program (Adobe Indesign). First I made a block of colour (background) which was 7" x 5". I chose a warm gray (Pantone Warm Gray 5), then I typed the words "LOVE" and "EVAN" in a font named "Cabin" at 125 pt. (a free font that can be downloaded here). I overlapped the last two letters of 'love' and the first two of 'Evan' and set the 'Evan' font block to "multiply" in the effects palette. I then set an opacity of 46%. And for those wondering, the colour I used for 'Evan' is Pantone 322.

Then I typed "the sweetest little baby boy..." below it in the font 'Bickley script' (download from here) and set the colour to "Pantone Cool Gray 11".

This is just how I did it of course, you can get the same affect through Photoshop or other programs that have some design capability.

The neat thing about the typography in this gift is that the last two letters of the word 'love' are reflected in Evan's name. (i.e. in 'love' we end with 've' but in 'Evan' we start with the opposite arrangement 'ev').

Here are a few other examples of how you could play with something like this: SPECIAL and LAYLA - see how 'special' ends with 'al' and then 'Layla' start with the opposite 'la'. Or, how about LOVE with EVIE, EVA, or even EVELYN. Or, JOY and YOLANDA. SWEET and TEAGEN, PURE and ERIN, or (my fave) LOVEABLE and ELAINE (ha!). See, the possibilities are endless!

Here is a better look at the the script line...

To frame it, I used a white frame with an interesting wood grain detail.

I got to meet baby Evan this weekend and give him a lot of cuddles. Mommy and Daddy enjoyed this gift and hopefully one day when he's old enough, little Evan will too.

What did you get up to this weekend? Any highs from 'new baby smell'? Any impromptu artwork projects? Regardless, I hope it was a nice one. Have a good week all!